Hi, looking to try out HA, and I think I’d be comfortable with installing it on windows. Is there a recommended mini pc box that people recommended? Thank you.
I’m actually running HASSOS on an old Atom-based Intel NUC (not Windows). My view is that that is far easier to setup and maintain vs. the Windows install variants.
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Raspberry Pi
Windows will be the worst experience. Try a RPi with Linux - probably easiest to just install HAOS to get you started.
@nytenor: since you’re looking for a new machine, dedicated to run HA, I would strongly advice against using windows.
You waste a lot of system resources just to have windows running and then you have to add some extra layer to run HA in a virtual environment.
An option would be a Raspberry Pi, on the upside: you might learn a few things about a new system.
Advantages:
- cheap
- small
- low power usage/power efficient
- fanless
Downside:
- if you keep it cheap by using a SD card, you can experience card corruption.
You can keep this at a minimum by selecting a high quality SD and always use a proper shutdown.
Another option would be to use a SSD, this avoids card corruption, makes the system much more snappier but also more expensive.
I have a few RPi’s (love them) running but not for HA since I have a server on which I run HA in a virtual environment.
Tried that, bought alll the RPi hardware, tried flashing with an SD multiple times. Nothing. Couldn’t even get a screen to show. Almost broke down and bought the pre-installed product, but I know very little Linux. But given the strong recommendations here for RPi, I may need to do that.
Hi,
Windows is actually not the way you want to go. For real!
About the RPi - it’s pretty fine for testing, but do yourself a big favor, if you like HA and playing with your own cloudfree HomeAutomation, move at some point to a better hardware than a RPi. I waited to long. Surely you can use the backups, but at some point your also realize that you made here and there faults or there is space for improvements.
Furthermore, it makes absolutely no sense to upgrade the RPi with for example external SSDs, Adapters and such. Why do I say that? Let’s make a brief calculation
- RPi 4 with 8GB RAM = 70+€
- SD Card = 10€
- SSD = 30+€
- Good Case for the RPi = 20++€
- PSU with 3.5A = ~20€
- …
So it’s almost ~150€. Sure 4GB is also enough for the RPI4, or you can try with a RPi3, but mostlikely its how I said already. You will come to a point where the Hardware has not enough power.
For me the point came actually when I thought about voice commands. My Raspberry Pi 3 b+ breached it’s limit with Rhasspy. Also with the RPI under full load this is not realy fun.
Therefore I bought a Mini PC of BMAX. This tiny thing is up to now just f***** awesome. Actually I have no experience in endurance of that pc. But so far it fullfills all my needs and has still power left. The power consumption is around ~4W. With a stresstest of the 4 cores it reaches ~15W.
By the way. The price for the complete Mini PC (4 cores, 8GB RAM, 120GB SSD, Wifi, LAN, Bluetooth, …) was 161€.
just my two cents…
cheers
fb
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I could imagine that you did not extract the .zip file before flashing. Then nothing will show up. There are several tools you can use for that. Also there is a good docu on the Rasbian site how you can do that. I do it usually with dd(disk dump). But you won’t have this one on a windows system.
So there is no need to buy the already pre installed sd-card.
Thank you, I will definitely look into this. Do you have any thoughts on HA Blue? Home Assistant Blue! - Home Assistant
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Thank you very much. I will look into this.
Thank you, I’ll revisit my setup.
No idea about the blue. Was even not aware that it exists.
From the specs it does absolutely seems not bad.
Just compared my CPU with the one from that:
It seems that the blue uses even less power. But maybe anyone else can tell us something about the normal processing power usage.
Cheers
fb
I’m running HA on a Shuttle mini PC. Industrial standards, certified to run 24/7. And powerful too. HA runs very smooth on it in a Linux Docker.
I just looked up the old NUC I’m using for dedicated HASSOS. A 5 pack costs 72$ at Walmart. But I needed to replace the existing 4G SSD with a 24$ 160G SSD that I flashed from HASSOS image in the HA install area I linked to.
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A bit late, and not exactly a proper answer. But I use an old laptop I had at home. It does also do the job of Plex server and I also have Alexa installed on it. It works as a NAS system, too, by sharing the drives connected to it. The computer is in my TV cabinet so it also works as a media player on its own. A computer can do a lot of work for you, and best of all, you can work on your Home Assistant installation while using it to play smething or do searches etc., and Home Assistant restarts in a minute. As far as I know, restarting HA on raspberry pi is a pain. But hey, that’s just me. Only point, being a virtual setup, always backup (take snapshots) your virtual machine.
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Hey there, not sure if tis okay to resurrect older threads. But im doing research starting my own smart home and want to get into the world of Home Assistant. From my research so far has shown me a good community support, and alot of options to customise.
Your post got my interest since im having issues choosing a hardware system to start with. Since I want to be sure to have enough Oompf to keep me going without requiring extra updates on hardware components.
How has the mini pc from BMAX been for you? Im considering getting one aswell since its a bit more affordable than the intel nuc.
Hi,
the Mini PC is superb. Meanwhile I have also lots of additional stuff running on it. All with ease and no issues at all.
- Grafana + postgresql
- Z-Wave, Zigbee, 433 MHz, Wifi
- several docker images
- voice recognition
- …
Only thing I did is to buy an additional HDD, as I did not want the DBs log to the internal SSD. Works also flawlessly. You just need to buy an adapter for the additional HDD.
Only one issues… But it could be also a kernel update(driver update) with the internal wifi nic. I just used another usb dongle now for that. Beside that the pc is awesome so far. Especially since I came with the Raspberry PI’s very fast to their limits…
I’m actually running HASSOS on a Intel NUC 10i3FNK (Intel® NUC 10 Performance kit - NUC10i3FNK)
I do believe that running HASSOS on a zx01 intel n5105 would be a nice option to Raspberry PI. So I would like to know if anyone here in this forum had a chance to run HASSIO on zx01 intel n5105 ??
(Zx01 windows 11 mini computador intel n5105 2.9ghz ddr4 8gb 1tb ssd 1000m 5g wifi bt4.2 desktop mini computador gamer computador vs beelink u59|Mini-PC| - AliExpress)
Thanks !
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My first installation was an old Raspberry 3 with 1G of RAM and initially it worked, I had it running for about 3 months, and gradually began adding additional stuff like Deconz, node-RED and mosqitto to it. It all worked (almost) perfectly well (only occasional moments of lagginess in node RED automations) until the day it suddenly came to a grinding halt with parts of it crashed and parts of it still running, then took 5 Minutes to boot after hard power cycling, only to freeze and hang again soon afterwards.
I attribute this to the 1Gig of RAM and the occasional slowness to the slow SD card in conjunction with swapping on the SD card.
The next day I ordered a BMAX B2 plus (8G RAM, 128G SSD)
I installed Proxmox on it, then ran the recommended script to install HA on Proxmox, forwarded my Conbee USB dongle to the VM, booted it up and restored from backup and everything was instantly working, all my addons were there, all my historical sensor data, all my Zigbee devices, everything.
So I strongly recommend getting something with more than 1G and an SSD instead of an SD card.
Additionally I recommend getting something that will allow you to install Proxmox on it (only works with real SSD, not with EMMC, so don’t use the cheaper B1 or other cheap Mini PC without SSD) so you can have this PC that is powered 24/7 run some additional stuff you might want to have, like for example a server for you media center, I’m going to migrate my own file server and kodi database to this new proxmox and save 8W permanent power consumption by consolidating multiple separate devices into one. It will also make your backups easier.
Here is a screenshot of some system metrics before and after the migration to the larger PC:
You can see how it ate up almost the complete RAM of the Raspi and the swap was full. CPU spikes indicate the phases where I had massive problems, unresponsive UI and crashed containers. On the right half of the graphs you see it running in its new environment and it seems perfectly happy with all the available space (gave it 2G RAM and 4 CPUs), no lag anymore, everything snappy and responsive. Strongly recommend.
Bmax B2 plus with 8GB, 128GB SSD, running HA inside Proxmox (right half of the graphs, left half was Raspi 3, 1GB):
(the second graph is disk usage, the screenshot utility messed it up)
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